Ralph Lauren quietly shuttered its two-year-old 20,000-square-foot store last week. Other brands are expected to close boutiques in a city that has lost its luster for cash-rich mainland Chinese tourists.

Eye Scoop

The race to get Ralph Lauren a date to jog with President Clinton as part of the "Fashion Targets Breast Cancer" campaign seems to be stumbling, according to sources at Lombardi Cancer Center in Washington. While director Marc Lippman continues to...

The race to get Ralph Lauren a date to jog with President Clinton as part of the “Fashion Targets Breast Cancer” campaign seems to be stumbling, according to sources at Lombardi Cancer Center in Washington. While director Marc Lippman continues to negotiate with White House aides, it seems that the Council of Fashion Designers of America T-shirt — with a target as its logo — is giving the White house pause. Aides are worried the logo might be a security risk.

“A plane crashes into the White House and they’re worried about a T-shirt,” complained one frustrated organizer.

Marina Schiano may have been dropped by Graydon Carter, but she’s loved by Tina Brown. Vanity Fair’s former style director has become a consultant for the New Yorker’s fashion issue, due out in November. “We’re very fortunate to have her,” said Brown, through a spokeswoman.

Even before it opened on Monday, Karl Lagerfeld’s new flagship boutique at 17 Faubourg St. Honore had already ticked off a number of people in Paris. “Facing the great windows of Hermès and Lanvin . . . how could you have transformed a boutique into a concrete bunker, with punch holes and a surface painted raspberry?” wrote the indignant president of the local retailers association, Bertrand de Courcy, in a letter to Lagerfeld’s fashion house.

De Courcy, Hermès’s communication director, even lobbied the city planning commission in an attempt to stop what he refers to in his letter as “this little concrete fortress” with “its aesthetic blight.” The two-floor shop is designed by Boris Sipek, the distinguished Czech modern architect and designer.

“This is a fascist letter. It’s a typical example of small-minded French bourgeois thinking,” lamented Lagerfeld, also noting that the light plum color was to be toned down anyway.

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@rebeccaminkoff is bringing self-checkout to high fashion: The brand has partnered with @queuehop to bring its customers self-checkout options, beginning this holiday season at its SoHo store. (📷: @aurorarosephoto)

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